


Understanding

by blink_fahrenheit



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Dynamics, Gen, Introspection, Y'Know?, about GROUP DYNAMICS, and civilians, and the ever-bizarre situation of having hardcore military types, but instead this, cuz listen guys i have been having thoughts, i literally wrote this by accident, i meant to write some whump, idk i'll get that whump to you real soon i swear, in the field together, like there has got to be some cognitive mismatch in there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 12:03:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9384122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blink_fahrenheit/pseuds/blink_fahrenheit
Summary: Jack muses on an imbalance he sees in the team.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey look I came back! Only took a couple years, you know how life goes.  
> I also picked up a new fandom out of completely fucking nowhere, and have discovered that the only things I can write are melodramatic think pieces about war and mortality. Oh well. Stick to my skillset I guess.

                Working with Riley, wonderful as it may be, put Jack in a bit of a peculiar situation.

                She wasn’t some naïve kid; he knew that. She had seen plenty of things that had changed her, that would have changed anyone. She’d been in prison, for chrissake, and Jack knew better than most what prison could do to people. Only thing was, she wasn’t a soldier. And when it came down to it, that distinction actually kind of mattered.

                It got more pronounced when Bozer came on board, this peculiar situation of theirs. Jack knew it weighed on Mac all the time. He could see it in the kid’s face sometimes. They’d be together, in their cushy office-like HQ, laughing and lounging and like they were on break from some cushy office-like job, and Bozer would say something so casual, so comfortable, like he knew he was safe with them- and all of a sudden Mac would catch Jack’s eye.

                _They don’t get it_ , Mac seemed to be screaming, though on the outside he didn’t even let his smile falter. _They don’t understand._

                Mac would catch Jack’s eye, and Jack would try not to respond at all, but he knew Mac read the same message from him every time- _I know they don't._

                It was fine. Hell, it was better than fine, it was amazing. Jack’s life felt more whole than he could remember it being since he first enlisted. He didn’t have to lie anymore. He didn’t have to be keeping five different stories straight for five different people, all the while trying to keep those people from ever comparing notes. All his eggs were finally in one basket, and one basket was a hell of a lot easier to guard then a dozen little ones.

                But still, every so often, when he and Mac were out in the field, they’d forget for a moment. They’d be in some shitty old car that Mac had suped up, or sitting in the sun on some rooftop waiting for a helicopter extraction. It would feel just a little too familiar, and boom. They were in the Army again. Two sunburned grunts, in those moments when rank didn’t matter and they could just sit and laugh their asses off at how fucking crazy it was they still hadn’t died yet. And then the radio would flare to life, and Bozer would ask Mac about dinner, and both of them would freeze. They’d stare at each other and the same thought would screech through both of their heads.

                _They don’t get it. They don’t understand._

                Riley and Wilt weren’t soldiers. They never had been. They weren’t innocent or naïve, but they weren’t _soldiers_. They had never _seen_ war, felt it beating on their eardrums and smelled it in the glare of the sun. They didn’t know, because they couldn’t know, the things that you can only ever know if you were there.

                Wilt once told Mac over the comm, “Don’t blow up, man.” It was such a normal thing to say, something that Jack would probably have said himself if Bozer hadn’t beaten him to it, but Bozer’s voice, when he said it, was just _missing_ something and it made Jack want to throw things. Made him want to grab Bozer by the shoulders and shake him and yell at him to try and make him _understand_ that Mac was a fucking _EOD_ , he was _bomb tech_ , that to guys out in the field Mac was the angel of God come down to bring salvation, or else by the slip of a hand rain down the kind of destruction that mortal minds can’t fully comprehend until they watch it happen to someone they ate breakfast with that morning. For reasons that made absolutely no sense, it made Jack want to punch the ground until his hands bled, that Bozer- sweet, honest, unbelievably kind and smart and loyal Bozer- had spent years with Mac and never understood that in the desert sun, when somebody said the word _bomb_ , Angus MacGyver became to other soldiers what religion was to the dying.

                 They didn’t get it. And that was _good_. Jack didn’t _want_ them to get it. As much he wished he could look at Riley and really feel like the two of them belonged on the same goddamn planet, he couldn’t bring himself to imagine what her eyes would look like if they held the kind of understanding that Mac’s did. Sometimes he hated even seeing it in Mac’s eyes, to be honest. That unnamable something that settled into a person’s face when they really understood that life was always just one gunshot away from being over- well. If he could keep that look off their faces, he would.

                Of course, it’s not like he ever got a choice in these things.

**Author's Note:**

> Look literally all I wanted was to write some whump, but then I started thinking about Jack's relationship with Mac, and how fucking bizarre this group of people is given their different backgrounds, and then this happened. The whump will come later, I promise, for those of you who are into that kind of thing. (Like me. I am into that kind of thing.)


End file.
